When George Washington University barred a depressed student from campus and attempted to intimidate him into withdrawing from school, the legal wonks immediately questioned why university administrators were even given access to this student’s private medical information.

Furthermore, a school policy of amputating the depressed is not only inherently cruel, it’s an abdication of any responsibility that the school itself had in fostering conditions that might produce depression. Anyone who has ever been a student at a major university can probably recite a litany of frustrating, contradictory, and downright wrong experiences that occured there. Often the only thing separating successful students from those who fall through the cracks is the existence of an outside social safety net. In other words, punishing a student for being depressed may amount to an act of class violence.

Perhaps someone should send the GWU administrators an anonymous copy of The Beach.